Cut your wheels onto a certain dirt road in the Cleveland National Forest — off Ortega Highway, not far past the candy store — and you’ll soon reach the Round Potrero Ranch. On the ranch, beyond a wide meadow circled by oak trees, you’ll find the “castle” — a small house complete with a turret. And inside the house, until very recently, you might have found Bob Fraser.

Fraser, a lawyer, a rancher and a cowboy through and through, died last month and was buried two Saturdays ago on the edge of that meadow, beside Gabino Ramon, a ranch hand and a longtime friend – just the way Fraser would have liked it.

Fraser was 84, and died of cancer and other health complications while listening to a song called “The Streets of Laredo,” his son, Philip Fraser, said. Deeply attached to the wild and to wild lands, he championed the cause of mountain lions and, in recent years, became an anti-toll road activist.

“Within one month, he had been riding a horse, and then he died of natural causes,” Phil Fraser said.

In addition to his son, he leaves behind his daughters, Jan and Trish, their mother Dorothy Rita Fraser, and grandchildren Theta, Caleb, Annie and Austin.

He also leaves behind a rather large entourage of friends, farther-flung family and associates. Close to 200 people crowded into his tiny turret house for his funeral, and just about all of them followed as his casket was wheeled along a dirt path through that wide meadow.

The casket, made by hand by his friend, Hal Forsen-Fraser, was preceded on the path by a kilt-wearing escort, playing bagpipes, beating drums and bearing a Scottish flag with the marks of the clan Fraser. Bob Fraser revelled in his cowboy roots, but his eyes really lit up when he talked about his Scots ancestry.

He had taken trips to the Scottish highlands, grown close to his relatives there, helped create the Clan Fraser Association for California and hosted a number of clan gatherings at the Round Potrero ranch. These events were well populated by kilt wearers and bagpipe players; they featured a mock Scottish battle, complete with the firing of cannon rounds and a charge across the field. His most recent gathering four years ago was even attended by a Scottish lord.

Phil Fraser sang “The Streets of Laredo” in tribute to his father at the funeral gathering, finishing the song in a full-throated voice before he broke down briefly. It was on the edge of that meadow. Not far away, Fraser’s horse stood near some oak trees, saddled up, with boots turned backward in the stirrups in deference to an old cowboy tradition.

The cowboy part of Bob Fraser was no pretense. He was someone who managed to look like he was wearing a cowboy hat, even when he wasn’t. As a teenager in the 1940s, he was a guide and wrangler for the Glacier Park Saddle Co., an experience that generated many stories about rides through the wilderness, and grizzly bears.

After listening to one such story, a reporter asked Fraser if he’d seen “Open Range.”

“The end of it,” Fraser replied, looking a bit perplexed. The reporter realized Fraser had never heard of the Robert Duvall film; he thought he was being asked about the actual open range period of American history.

“Can you imagine what Montana was like in the 20s and 30s?” asked Fraser’s friend, Bob Hank, proprietor of the Wilderness Ranch and a neighbor of Fraser’s who had known him for 40 years. “That was still the wild west up there. It was not really settled up there yet, even. That was like the last of the frontier in the lower 48.”

That period of Fraser’s life came to an end when he enlisted in the Marines in 1942. His served in World War II as a first lieutenant in the south Pacific; after that, he was a reservist, and was called up to fight in the Korean War in 1950 and 51. Fraser received a variety of citations and commendations for his service.

Sometime during that service, likely in connection with time spent at Camp Pendleton, Fraser paid a visit to Orange County.

“That just opened his eyes to Southern California,” Phil Fraser said.

He ended up moving to Santa Ana, setting up his law practice, marrying Dorothy Rita Fraser, having children — and buying the Round Potrero.

“He realized he was putting down roots here,” Phil Fraser said. “He felt he needed to secure a chunk of nature where he could still continue to experience the outdoors.”

Hank helped him wrangle the cattle he kept on the ranch; Fraser lived there part of the time, and spent the rest of his time in Santa Ana.

HIs law practice was of a kind rarely seen today.

“He was a general trial attorney,” Phil Fraser said. “He did criminal, divorces.”

Near the end, when his illness had paralyzed his legs, he was placed in a recliner in the back of a pickup so his friends could drive him around the Potrero one last time. HIs friends called it “Bob’s last ride.”

Just what will become of the ranch and its roaming cattle, now that Bob Fraser is gone, is still being worked out, Phil Fraser said.

But the son hopes, and intends, to carry on the wilderness ethic of the father.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that my father’s spirit continues to live in me through my love of nature,” Phil Fraser said. “He got the ranch because of nature. Ultimately, I came to love nature because of the ranch. The highest use of the land is to let it go back to its most natural state, and manage it that way. And that’s what I plan to continue to do with the ranch.”

At the funeral, Virginia Fraser, mother of the present Baron of Lovat in Scotland, read a statement, and friends and family took turns telling stories of Bob Fraser amid the tall grasses and live oaks.

There were prayers, some Christian as well as some from an older, native American tradition; there were statements in English and in Spanish. There were songs, and jokes, and poems.

When it was over, the gathering headed back to the castle for drinks and a cookout while a mariachi band struck up a few lively tunes.

“We’re going to miss him, that’s for sure,” Bob Hank said later. “Life won’t be the same up here in these mountains without him. We’ll figure it out, and kind of make our way through it, but without him as our leader certainly change is going to take place. It’s not going to be the same anymore.”

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